Imaginative play with Schleich

14/03/2014

Here in the C household we've been huge fans of Schelich ever since Little Miss C received her first animal as a gift when she was about a year old. They really are the most amazing quality animals and beautifully realistically decorated. Even the undersides of them are given the same attention as the upper surfaces – something that you definitely don't see on other makes.

Our animal collection has seen hours and hours of play. They've been thrown around the living room, covered with dirt in the garden, pushed down the garden slide, bathed in puddles and chewed on as teething toys (with a wash inbetween) yet they all still look as good as the day they came home from the shop.

They also encourage so much imaginative play which is vitally important for young children. As well as acting out farm and zoo scenes our animals have been for trips to the moon, have explored with the Schleich dinosaurs and have also been taken on many train trips around the kitchen floor. The ones that LMC used to play with are now shared with her brother and a trip to the local toy shop often includes a request for a new animal for the collection.

As well as the animals themselves the other thing that gave LMC hours and hours of pleasure when she was learning to talk was the small Schleich catalogue that they have a pile of in our local toy shop. She used to request this "book" at bedtime and would insist that we go through every single page pointing at all the animals and saying what they were. As her vocabulary increased she started being able to say what they all were herself (hence learning a huge amount about the animal kingdom), and not long after was requesting which ones we buy on our next trip to the shops!

Master C already loves playing with the Schleich collection that we've built up and he's also just learning to talk, so I've been prepared and picked up a couple of their new catalogues ready!

Discalimer: We were sent three Schleich horses for the purposes of this review. All other animals are ones we've bought ourselves.